Seaplane Up with 170 Passengers

WITH 169 persons numbered in the official list of passengers and crew, the Dornier monster seaplane DO-X recently made a flight of nearly an hour over Lake Constance, Switzerland. A four-year-old boy not counted in the records brought the total to 170 persons, by far the largest number ever taken aloft at once, either in airplane or dirigible, in the history of aviation.

This achievement marked the latest of nearly forty successful flights of the German seaplane. On this occasion it lifted a dead weight of fifty-two tons into the air. Despite the enormous weight, it landed on the lake surface so smoothly that many of the passengers, who were sitting on benches and chairs, were not aware of it.

A transatlantic flight tentatively scheduled for next spring is proposed for the future program of the DO-X plane. Two sister ships of equal size are under construction for the Italian government at the Friedrichshafen, Germany, plant. Similar or even larger ships will be built in the United States, according to the recent announcement of the American automobile concern which will back their construction here under the Dornier patents.

Experts suggest that such huge flying boats may seriously compete with dirigibles for large-scale transport. They point out that while dirigibles have a slightly greater cruising range and more comfort, an airplane of the DO-X’s size has the advantage in greater speed and in the smaller crew required to run it.